March 29, 2014
This is cold war shit
Burn, Destroy, Wreck, Kill - SB Nation reports from the inside of the fan culture of the biggest rivalry in the MLS, the Seattle Sounders and Portland Timbers. The rivalry game between the two cities is on April 5th.
Carrier Access Codes and cultural detritus, featuring Alf and friends
Carrier Access Codes are a largely dated*, though still functional service to select your long-distance telephone carrier per phone call. In the United States, these "dial-around codes" reached a (commercial) peak in the late 1990s, as seen with ads featuring such semi-notables as Marla Gibbs, Christine Taylor and Reginald VelJohnson, Harry Anderson, John Lithgow, Tony Danza, Doug Flutie, and even Alf and some well-known friends. [more inside]
"You need time to think."
Palisades del Rey (Surfridge ghost town)
Surfridge is a ghost town in the South Bay area of Los Angeles. It overlooks the Pacific Ocean and is now home to 125,000 El Segundo blue butterflies.
All I did was steal some bread!
Neil Patrick Harris and Jason Segal sing "Confrontation" from Les Miserables on Inside the Actors Studio. [more inside]
European Word Translator
Look the negative in the face
"In the early 1970s, arson became a spectacular growth industry. Buildings throughout the borough were burned intentionally in an effort to recoup much of their lost value. In 1976 Roger Starr, city housing commissioner, later New York Times urban affairs editor, proposed a plan he called “Planned Shrinkage.” The city, he said, is divided into neighborhoods that were “productive” and others that were “unproductive,” a drag on the tax base. We have to eliminate the unproductive. This meant to “stop the Puerto Ricans and rural blacks from living in the city.” If we turn off water, electricity, sanitation, and stop making repairs when systems break, we can drive the unproductive out. In the past, the urban system took “ the peasant . . . and [turned him] into an industrial worker.” But now “there are no industrial jobs,” and it is our task to “keep [this man] a peasant.” We must “reverse the role of the city” as a world-historical force. " -- Marxist philosopher and lifelong Bronx resident Marshall Berman, who sadly passed away last year talks about the attempted urbicide of the South Bronx and how it rose up again from it in his last public lecture at the City College of New York
mais comme bonnes à penser
Animals aren’t tools for thinking. Animals are some of the basic building blocks of thought itself
When he’s teaching, my friend the writer William Fiennes sometimes asks students to write about an encounter they have had with an animal at some time in their lives. What they soon discover is that the animal is always some unspoken aspect of themselves. The rat in the compost bin. The teenage girls escaping from a predatory geography teacher who stumble on a sheep giving birth. The deer shot by two boys who’ve stolen a gun. Put an animal in a story and it is never just an animal.[more inside]
How Chipotle transformed itself by upending its approach to management
Hiring, rewarding, and empowering top performers Compared to most fast-food chains, Chipotle favors human skill over rules, robots, and timers. So how did the Mexican-style food chain come to be like this while expanding massively since the 2000s? In part due to promoting from within instead of hiring culinary graduates.Today nearly 96% of hourly managers are the result of internal promotions.
Cleveland Rocks!
"In a real ukulele-smasher, Honolulu claimed the top spot for both jazz and reggae, while Green Bay, Wisconsin, revealed an achy, breaky heart for country. For the Day-Glo spandex set, our data on EDM suggests you’ll find the highest concentration of like-minded people in Jacksonville, Florida."
A Deep Web Guide to America's Taste In Music.
A Deep Web Guide to America's Taste In Music.
Introducing Yasmine Hamdan
The Rise and Fall of Professional Bowling
There was a time when professional bowlers reigned supreme.
In the "golden era" of the 1960s and 70s, they made twice as much money as NFL stars, signed million dollar contracts, and were heralded as international celebrities. After each match, they’d be flanked by beautiful women who’d seen them bowl on television, or had read about them in Sports Illustrated. [more inside]
n'est-ce pas?
It took a while, but someone has finally lampooned Cadillac's much-derided "Poolside" commercial starring Neal McDonough. And not just any old someone: the Ford Motor Co.
« Previous day | Next day »